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Monthly Archives: April 2014

HEY EVERYBODY!!!!! Alligator here (but you can call me Ali).
So I read Bird’s post on the bowler hat – (BOOR-ING) – but it got me thinking about hats and such… I can make it so much more fun! So MY post is going to be a competition format, and the title is, “WHO HAT BETTER?”

PQ Bird: What do you mean, who HAT better? Do you mean, “who looks better in the hat”? Or, “who does the hat fit best”? Or maybe, “who WEARS the hat better”?Ali: Ah, you proved my point. See how clumsy you sound? That’s why it’s WHO HAT BETTER. Gets right to the point. So let’s get on with it!!!
HEY EVERYBODY! Welcome to my new column, WHO HAT BETTER, a contest between myself and Ben! You, the audience, just need to vote on WHO HAT BETTER, me or him? Send in your votes now! And thanks for participating!

Hi all- PQ Bird here. Welcome to my first post. As a bird, of course, I have the opportunity to travel quite a bit and observe all kinds of animals and people and their habitats. So in my last journey, I saw some indigenous South American women wearing hats that didn’t seem to fit exactly. Didn’t fit on their heads and didn’t seem, well, indigenous.

So I wondered, how did they end up wearing this hat? I did some quick research and found out that the women are Quechua and Aymara natives of Peru and Bolivia and the hat, originally from England, is called a bowler hat (bombin in South America).

The hat itself has an interesting story. It was apparently created for gamekeepers on an estate in England who were having trouble keeping their top hats on as they rode through the forest (picture that!). The bowler was designed to be sturdy and lower on their heads so as to stay on and protect the head. The hat keepers who made the hat in 1849 were named “Bowler”- hence the name. But how did the hat get to South America, and how did it become popular with the indigenous women there?